


A Radiant Darkness

by whereismygarden



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, POV Multiple, The Dark Side of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9169300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: Lieutenant Poe Dameron, a New Republic pilot, is flying two Jedi students to Coruscant. It's only the beginning of their troubles when they crash on an isolated planet.





	

                  The controls of the old shuttle were turning sticky and unresponsive under Poe’s hands. They’d dropped out of hyperspace unexpectedly, in a star system, a warning displayed on the ship’s old computer that the hyperdrive was in bad shape. To make a very bad situation worse, they were orbiting a planet covered in grey clouds, and the orbit was tacky and decaying.

                  “What’s going on?” Ben asked, shouldering his way into the cockpit, peering through the front viewport.

                  “Lots of stuff,” Poe said. This was fantastic: he had a bad shuttle, a temperamental Jedi in training, a kid, and a planet with almost no documentation looming in front of him. Ben flicked his eyes over the screens.

                  “We’re way off course,” he observed, a note of fear in his voice. “The navigation computer must be having trouble.”

                  “We’re going to have to land and fix almost every system of this damn shuttle,” Poe said. “Get out of here, you can’t do anything.” He just hoped there were a few good mechanics close to wherever they’d end up landing. There was money and goods of a few different kinds onboard, in case of emergencies. Poe hadn’t actually expected to have to use any of it.

                  He dropped the shuttle into atmosphere, falling through the high grey clouds and smoothing out their descent as quickly as possible once he could see land and there were readings on his instruments. He missed his X-Wing and the BB-8 unit that never sent him in the wrong direction. General Organa was going to be disappointed with him to an unprecedented degree, he was sure. Newly qualified, but with plenty of experience, and his first task of any importance was already going poorly.

                  The landing gear was all working properly, and Poe set them down all right into a brushy field. He had spotted a structure not too far away, but he wasn’t about to assume that anyone there would be friendly. They were far into the Unknown Regions, having gone in the opposite direction expected.

                  When Poe entered the small cabin of the shuttle, Ben was extracting a backpack that he hadn’t seen the kid bring onboard, from behind a panel of the wall. Rey was rewinding the ends of her leggings around her ankles, little face very focused.

                  “What’s that?” Poe asked, pointing to the bag. Ben raised an eyebrow, as if being asked to account for his possessions was beneath him.

                  “Stuff,” he said. Poe rolled his eyes.

                  “Okay, you two can stay in the shuttle, I’m going to go check out the building a few klicks from here, see if anyone can help us.”

                  “No,” Ben said. “We should fix everything ourselves. They probably saw us when we came down, we need to hurry.”

                  “I’m not a mechanic,” Poe said. “And I doubt everyone past the Outer Rim is an opportunist robber.”

                  Ben snorted, pushing a hand through his hair. “That’s not it…there’s something strange here. I can feel changes in the Force. We are close to something Dark.” He said Dark with a capital letter, and a twist of anxiety through his gangly frame.

                  Poe wanted to dismiss this as fright, but Ben was training under Luke, the most promising of his students.

                  “I don’t think I can fix the shuttle,” he said again. “Let me send a message.” He went back into the cockpit and sent out an encrypted signal, hoping it wouldn’t decay too much before it reached the closest Resistance listening station.

                  This time, when he came back into the cabin, Ben was sitting cross-legged and assembling a blaster, Rey leaning against his side and watching him.

                  “What the hell?” Poe said. Rey looked up, alarmed, then smiled at him.

                  “Maybe Ben can fix the ship, he’s good at making things,” she said, her sweet little voice completely innocent.

                  “Why the hell do you have a blaster?” Poe demanded, checking his hip to make sure the kid hadn’t snatched his, though it was a different type. Ben sneered a little.

                  “It’s my father’s,” he said, sighting down it. “I don’t have my staff with me.”

                  “You stole your father’s blaster?” Poe said, glancing at Ben’s pack. It looked a bit smaller.

                  “He wouldn’t care if I did,” Ben said. “But I _didn’t,_ this one is technically mine.”

                  Poe thought he shouldn’t be surprised that the son of two Generals carried around a blaster, though it looked odd in the teenager’s hands, at odds with the freckles and acne and not-yet-filled-out lines of his tall frame. He leaned forward and snatched the pack off the ground, dumping the contents out before Ben could take it back with the Force: he wouldn’t put it past the kid.

                  “Hey!” Ben jumped to his feet, grabbing the empty pack out of Poe’s hands: he was already taller than the pilot, and probably stronger too. There was a mixture of packaged rations and what looked like cigarettes and packets of far worse drugs. Rey snagged a package of crackers and jumped back into her seat, watching the two of them with a mulish set to her jaw. Of course she was glaring at Poe: too young to know that her cousin was breaking multiple laws.

                  “What is this?” Poe said, throwing his hands up.

                  “They’re not _mine_!” Ben shouted, turning red. “Are you an idiot? I’m not going to travel without something valuable in case of emergencies.”

                  “ _You’re_ the idiot,” Poe bit out, grabbing at his own hair in frustration. “I already have plenty of bribe money and other stuff.” The other stuff was medicine and batteries, not hard drugs, of course. “Whatever, just pack it back up, you maniac.” He took down the basic toolkit from where it was stowed in the cabin and thought he would start with the main controls, so they could at least get somewhere more isolated on this rock.

                  Rey and Ben, of course, climbed out behind him, and he had to admit it was helpful to have Ben Force-lift pieces of the shuttle engine apart. It was nerve-wracking to watch Rey clamber over the shuttle, bare feet tensed, face intent on what they were doing. She wouldn’t just stay on the ground, though Poe had moved her twice. Ben just handed her a pair of safety glasses and didn’t blink when she stumbled over the edge of her tunic. His hand shot out so fast he nearly slapped Poe in the face, but Rey’s fall was halted, and she descended slowly to the ground.

                  “Oh for hell’s sake, both of you need to stop. I’ll finish by myself. Rey,” he said, making himself calm his voice to address the eight year old, “I need you to stay on the ground, okay? I can’t make sure you won’t fall.”

                  “I can jump from that high,” Rey protested. “Ben just caught me to show off.” She gave Ben a knowing look.

                  “Rey, just stay on the ground,” Ben groaned out, posture long-suffering. Apparently Jedi training didn’t eliminate the melodrama of adolescence.

                  Rey stayed on the ground as requested, walking around the clearing and picking flowers, and Poe managed to tighten some of the damaged engine parts. He didn’t want to think about not being able to break orbit. Ben, his tan robes stained black with grease, hair still falling in his face, had been useful. Son of a pilot, after all, Poe thought.

                  “Hi,” Rey’s voice was faint, but cheerful. Poe and Ben turned their heads at once to see Rey a hundred meters away, where the grass of the field melted into a brushy forest. There was another kid standing next to her.

                  Ben beat Poe there, though the Force-enhanced leap he’d done from atop the shuttle had given him a twenty meter advantage. The other kid, the same size and probably the same age as Rey, startled back from them, but Ben got a fistful of his shirt and hauled him off his feet.

                  “Whoa whoa whoa easy there,” Poe said, and Rey kicked her cousin hard in the ankle. “Come on, a kid isn’t going to hurt anyone.” He took the child from Ben and set him back on his feet, then crouched down to his level.

                  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Poe.” The kid stared back: they had a short cropped hair cut, but dressed in a simple grey tunic and trousers, there was no way to guess at their gender. “You already met Rey,” the girl in question had stopped glaring at Ben and was now smiling widely at Poe and her new friend. “What’s your name?” Maybe in this remote planet, they didn’t speak Basic.

                  “There’s something wrong,” Ben said suddenly.

                  “Yeah, you nearly terrorized this kid,” Poe said sourly. He was going to get grey hair before they got to Coruscant.

                  “He wouldn’t have run. There’s something scarier…” Ben trailed off, eyes closing. Poe could guess he was doing something with the Force. “There’s something scarier the way he came. He has no name and no memories and whatever is behind him is worse than any unknown.”

                  “Oh, great,” Poe said. He turned back to the kid, whose brown eyes looked huge in his serious face. “You don’t have a name?”

                  “FN-2187,” the kid said hesitantly, frowning as if he knew that wasn’t quite right. Poe was starting to feel sick to his stomach, but he just nodded.

                  “That could be Finn. How do you feel about that?”

                  “That would be good,” the kid said, still serious. Then he looked over at Rey, offering her a smile in return. Rey beckoned him over closer to the shuttle, but Poe stopped Finn.

                  “Hey buddy, I know you’re upset, but what’s back the way you came?” He didn’t fully trust Ben’s doom-laden prediction, but a number and not a name was troubling, to say the least. Finn scrunched his shoulders up and looked ready to cry. Poe sighed. “Okay, go play with Rey for a while.” He tried to give him a comforting squeeze on the arm, but something oddly shaped pressed against his hand, under Finn’s shirt.

                  “What’s that?” Poe asked. Finn pushed his sleeve up and tugged at whatever was on his skinny arm until Poe, and Ben, who was still looming darkly, could see a black fiber armband, with a plastic disk set into it. A red light blinked in the middle of the disk, which said FN-2187 on the bottom part of the curve. There was no discernible catch or tie in it. Ben hissed out loud, though Poe managed to stop himself for Finn’s sake. “All right, now you can play with Rey.” And Finn ran off to her.

                  “That’s really bad,” Ben said. “We need to go.”

                  “The shuttle won’t fly,” Poe replied. “I need more time for repairs.”

                  “We don’t have time, the kid is wearing a tracker!” Ben’s voice was somewhere between a whine and a panicked shout.

                  “We don’t have options,” Poe replied, and Ben stomped off, back towards the forest. Poe went back to the shuttle, where Rey was showing Finn her small doll, shaped like a Wookie. He still needed to fix the engine rudder, at least an hour to get them into the air and farther from this section of the planet. He was making his best attempt while Ben paced the perimeters of the field, having found a long branch and made it into a staff. The blaster was tucked into the sash of his Jedi robes. On the whole, he looked slightly ridiculous, but it was vaguely comforting and let him focus more fully on the engine repair.

~

                  “Cadet Hux,” Captain Sadfa snapped at him. Hux saluted him crisply. “It seems one of the recruits has managed to wander off base.” He shoved a datapad into Hux’s hands. “Take a skimmer and retrieve him.”

                  Hux, who had been looking forward to eating lunch at last, saluted again as the captain walked off. He didn’t like being stationed here, and had decided that taking it out on Hux, the son of the program’s inventor, would be somewhat gratifying. At least that was Hux’s theory about why he was assigned to more cleanups and grunt work than any of the other twenty cadets here.

                  The datapad told him that FN-2187 was eight years old, had been recruited recently, and had had his memory wipe two weeks previously. Maybe it hadn’t taken perfectly: there were still wrinkles in the program, after all. They had plenty of distressed young recruits, but that one had managed to sneak away from the droids and officers guarding him and his fellows was a surprise. FN-2187, once brought in line, was going to be an asset.

                  Of course, the skimmer that Sadfa had authorized for him was a piece of junk that hardly went above forty kilometers an hour. Hux settled the helmet onto his head, ignoring the growling of his stomach, and checked the tracker signal. FN-2187 had made it five kilometers already.

                  He pushed the skimmer to its fastest speed, hoping that he’d make it back in time to get at least a little food. Maybe someone would save him a bite of something, though that was unlikely. His hurry was what undid him, because he was already zooming very close to where FN-2187 had stopped to rest or sleep when he processed the sound of metal clinking over the sound of the skimmer’s engine. When he burst into a clearing, squeezing the brakes hard, reaching for his blaster (set to stun someone small), something hard slammed into his chest, knocking him off the skimmer and onto the ground.

                  Something impacted his helmet, driving the side of it into his jaw, and then there was the distinct sensation of a boot driving into his stomach. Hux rolled away, scrambling backward with a speed that had always benefitted him, and was half onto his feet, looking at a tall kid about his own age in what looked like beggar’s clothes. He had an expression of pure rage on his face. Hux wasn’t the biggest, but he was the best fighter in his class, and when the other boy brought a stick towards him, he ducked it, got in close, and decked him in the nose. There was a crunch and then, shockingly, a heavy, painful thud against the back of his helmet. He wavered for a second, and the boy kicked him mercilessly in the balls, then drove a fist into his stomach, sending Hux to the ground.

                  “Ben, what the hell!” someone was shouting, and Hux clawed at hands trying to grab his blaster, trying to draw breath through pain and dizziness.

                  “ _Stop fighting_ ,” the tall boy said, and Hux felt a terrible pressure on his head and lungs, as though he was fighting sleep after days awake, as if he was trying to run through mud to his thighs. The blaster was jerked from his hip, tossed to the side.

                  Someone dragged the helmet from his head, and then pulled him upright. Hux tried to clear his mind.

                  “Are you—doing that mind thing--??” Whoever was behind him and had taken his helmet was addressing the tall boy. His broken nose was bleeding profusely, but he just sneered at Hux with stained, crooked teeth, and patted him down like a security droid, bleeding on his uniform.

                  “Yeah,” the tall boy said. “I can’t find a tracker.”

                  “The skimmer must have one.”

                  “Either way the kid still has one,” the tall boy said. He went over to the skimmer, which had tilted onto its side and was lying in the meadow grass. Whoever was behind Hux pulled him easily to his feet. The pressure on his head felt much reduced, but it had been a terrible feeling, his will not oppressed so much as distant.

                  “Let go of me! You’re trespassing on First Order territory,” he snapped. The man behind him spun him around, tilting his head at Hux.

                  “First Order, eh? Can’t say I’ve heard anything good about you.” And he tied Hux’s wrists in front of him, an expression more of exasperation than fear on his face. Hux looked over at their ship. FN-2187 must be inside. It looked to be in bad shape, parts of the hull removed to reveal the engine. This wasn’t an assault or a rescue of any kind, it was an accident. The man still holding his arm tightly was in an orange flightsuit, but without any indication of affiliation. The shuttle was small, old, and nondescript. Criminals, most likely.

                  “If you’re insistent on taking me hostage, don’t expect much in return from the Order,” he said. “They don’t negotiate with criminals.”

                  “How old are you?” the presumed pilot asked him. Hux didn’t respond. The tall boy came back, a few pieces of the skimmer in his dirty hands. Hux recognized the tracker: still intact enough to transmit, but no longer associated with the skimmer itself. He must be the mechanic, and maybe the muscle as well, judging by the staff, blaster, and the bruises blooming all over Hux’s body.

                  “It doesn’t matter: if he’s of age, he’s a prisoner. If he’s not, he’s a minor in protective custody.” For a criminal, that was a fairly astute observation of the politics of the situation.

                  “I don’t think he’s here unwillingly,” the pilot said scornfully. “He’s got a junior officer uniform.”

                  “All relative,” the other replied. “As you say, we don’t have options. He’s seen us now, hasn’t he?” That was frightening: Hux didn’t want to be shot to cover these savages’ tracks, though all it would do was incite the wrath of the Order, and they hardly had a getaway plan. His hands were tied in front: if he could just get back to the skimmer, he could get back and raise the alarm.

                  He had hardly started to formulate a plan when the tall boy went back to the skimmer and took it over to the shuttle, powering it down and putting the lanyard with the activation key around his neck. He smirked at Hux as he did so, as if he’d guessed his train of thought. Hux spat on the ground. He wondered how long it would be before Captain Sadfa gave him a second thought.

                  The pilot started to walk him to the shuttle, and Hux obliged, not seeing the point in resisting at the moment.

                  “No, he can’t go back there,” the tall boy interjected.

                  “Look, if we’re not going to let him loose, it’s the only option,” the pilot retorted. “Calm down, Ben, he’s just a kid like you.”

                  Hux didn’t like being called a kid, and based on the tall boy—Ben’s—scowl, nor did he. He was an officer of the First Order, and as such a better-trained fighter than either of these two, no matter how many staves he was hit with. He kept his head back on the way to the shuttle, and when the pilot pulled him in, he was gratified to see the grey-clad form of FN-2187 freeze and scramble away from him. It took another moment to register that there was another small person there, about the same age as FN-2187, a female based on the hairstyle, who was currently holding him tightly in a protective hug.

                  “FN-2—“ Hux had barely begun to chastise the recruit, because it was important to maintain order even when among criminals when the pilot elbowed him hard in the gut, knocking the wind from him.

                  “Shut up,” he snapped. “Don’t talk to the kid like that. In fact, don’t talk at all. I will gag you if I have to.” The pilot was young too, older than Hux and Ben but scarcely an adult. He shoved Hux into a seat and buckled him in.

                  “Rey,” he said, turning to the girl. “You and Finn should come out of the shuttle for now, this man has to stay here.” FN-2187 looked terrified, and the pilot opened his arms up, letting the boy run into them. “Hey, he came to chase you, but you’re okay. We caught _him._ ”

                  Hux was left to stew in the shuttle for over an hour, getting hungrier by the moment. There were some packages scattered around, but he couldn’t lean in any way to get them. No matter how he twisted, he couldn’t free himself, and Ben came by about once a minute to look at him darkly. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to hear metal clanking and the occasional exasperated cry of the pilot.

                  Then suddenly, Ben was grabbing him and dragging him out of the shuttle, pushing him onto the skimmer, tying him by the waist to the back seat and adding some bags. The skimmers at this base were big, because they might need to bring multiple recruits to different locations, and though Hux had taken the smallest model, it was big enough for Ben to climb on beside him while the girl and FN-2187 sat next to the pilot in front of them. Ben somehow managed to cut through the extremely sturdy material of FN-2187’s armband and tossed it next to the skimmer tracker at his feet. FN-2187 rubbed his arm furiously, and Ben twisted his mouth.

                  “You’re fine,” he said, sullenly. He took an elastic from around his arm—hidden under his dirty sleeves—and pulled his shaggy hair into a low, laughably short tail at the nape of his neck. Hux sneered at him, and predictably Ben sneered back.

                  “Why don’t you just cut your hair?” Hux asked. “You look like you were raised on the Outer Rim.”

                  “This is beyond the Outer Rim, so I don’t know what that says about you,” Ben retorted. The skimmer lurched forward, and Hux hunched his shoulders and slid down to avoid tree branches as the pilot took them into the forest at top speed. After about twenty minutes, during which they traveled slightly parallel to the base, Ben kicked the trackers off the skimmer and they switched directions, now going due south. Hux, trying to ignore his hunger, hoped they would leave him somewhere close enough to the base that he wouldn’t die trying to get back, but he wasn’t counting on it.

~

                  Feeling the unabated stress from the Order officer was wearing on Ben. It was bad enough that Poe telegraphed everything, but at least he could compartmentalize and had a grip on his emotions. The buffet of the weight of the responsibility Poe felt nagged at Ben: he didn’t like being anyone’s charge. Especially Poe’s: the man was barely of age himself, he didn’t need to see Ben as such a kid. The Order kid wasn’t feeling much of anything but a close seethe of anxiety and dread, but it was overwhelmingly strong, and despite his blank face, it felt like he was having a panic attack. Finn was plainly terrified of him, and was fluctuating between fear and excitement, while Rey was taking everything in with a mix of fearlessness and wariness. Rey, Ben thought, was going to be the best of any of them in the skimmer. The things she felt weren’t emotions in a distracting way, they were pure impressions.

                  The Order kid was in pain. Ben, who had a headache like a spike through his brain from his broken nose, was glad about it, until the sensation of the other boy’s hunger started to affect him. He took a carbohydrate bar from his pack, tore off the package, and stuck it into the kid’s bound hands, then ate one himself. Then he split one between Finn and Rey, tucking all the wrappers carefully back into his pack. The Order kid ate fast and hungrily, hunching down more than was strictly necessary, like a dog afraid his meal would be stolen. Ben suppressed the urge to kick him: it would only be mean, serving no purpose, and Rey would get upset, and Poe might say something to Luke. Luke was forever upset about his anger, and made Ben run or train for hours until the anger drained away. Sometimes even that didn’t work, and he would spend the night shaking in rage over something that had been a small quarrel, once.

                  “Where are we going?” he asked Poe, because what was there on this planet besides the First Order base? He could find out. He was certain the Order kid would be easy to puzzle out with the Force. Emotions and thoughts were Ben’s strength in the Force, naturally, the way that detachment and passion already mixed potently in Rey. Even that insight was because of his gifts in reading other people. It was horribly ironic that he didn’t have any friends, but maybe that was just the path he had to walk. Fitting in its cruel solitude: it appealed to him.

                  “We’re circling a little,” Poe said. “Looking for anything that isn’t a base. We might have to steal a shuttle.”

                  At that, the kid laughed, and Ben did kick him hard in the calf. He kicked back, and there was a brief scuffle before Ben had his legs trapped and a hand on the back of his neck, forcing him forward and to the side. He never lost fights, and the Order kid, though stronger than he looked, was skinny and bent to his greater weight and leverage.

                  “Ben, just keep it together,” Poe said. “Make a friend.” Ben bristled at the phrase, but let go of the kid, who didn’t shy away from his gaze. He had pale eyes that held a remarkable amount of cold hate: he was almost jealous at the control there. Ben wanted to continue the fight, but he could feel a spike of anxiety coming from Poe. He resisted the urge to push it down. Luke was adamant that interference in the will of others, except to preserve life, was of the Dark. Ben thought it was in the interests of all their lives to soothe Poe, but then again, maybe his worry would save them from ambush better than false calm. He scooted to the edge of the seat and focused on the forest going by, trying to block out the tide of fear rising all around him, and the anger always rising inside.

                  Instead of trying to empty his mind, which was a more difficult type of meditation, Ben focused out, on every tree that they went flying past, until his mind was a palette of green, brown, leaf-scent, wind-burn, nothing but sensation. The people in the skimmer were reduced to four muted points of energy that were hardly more striking than the trees. The atmosphere of this place was still one of darkness: he could feel the tilt and tendency of the Force keenly here, more skewed toward the Dark than any other place he had been.

                  “Ben,” Poe snapped his fingers in front of Ben’s face, jarring him out of his trance. The skimmer was idling still, and he could sense the presence of many people before them, out of sight. “We should be close to whatever base they have here, judging by what I saw when we landed.”

                  Ben blinked at him, coming back to himself. He was impressed, but not really surprised, that Poe could do the math to orient them.

                  “We are, I can feel it.” He shot a glance at the Order kid, feeling an urge to gag him. They weren’t that close, but it still pressed at him. Whatever was in that base, it scared him, and he wanted it to stay away from them.

                  “Okay, here’s the plan,” Poe said quietly. “I’m going to go ahead on foot, get access to a small shuttle. Then I’ll send off some signal, you fly the skimmer in with the kids, we go.”

                  “What if there’s no shuttle there?” Ben asked. Poe turned to look at the Order kid.

                  “Hey, what’s your name?” he asked, casually, as if meeting him in a cafeteria. The kid just looked balefully at him. Ben licked his lips. “I’m Poe.”

                  “I heard you talking,” the kid said. Ben, not trying very hard to stop himself, slid across the seat so that he was very close to the kid, who leaned away once he realized Ben was not going to stop short of touching him.

                  “I can make you tell us,” he said, exultant inside at the idea of having reason to. He clenched his fists. “Anything.”

                  Poe shoved him in the shoulder, and looked slightly concerned when Ben turned. “Take it down a notch, interrogator,” he said. “A cadet like this isn’t going to know what kind of shuttles they have anyway, this is a training camp for cannon fodder.”

                  “I do,” the kid spat out at Poe. “I can fly a GX-3 and an Aggressor shuttle!”

                  Poe smiled, and the kid turned a fiery crimson Ben had never before seen on a human face, grinding his teeth. Then he slammed his head down into his bound hands with a choked-off snarl. Ben was about to verbally rub it in when Poe spoke again.

                  “Okay, the GX-3 is going to be cramped, but much more maneuverable than the Aggressor, and we have to get off planet. Once we’re in hyperspace, we just need to get to the Outer Rim.”

                  “How are you going to get the shuttle?” Ben asked. Poe looked at their hostage again, who stared back, jaw set, eyes glittering with what must be tears of humiliation.

                  “Listen, kid. Wouldn’t you rather come with us to the New Republic? You can have a better life than training on this rock, kidnapping children.” Poe sounded absolutely sincere. Poe was too good, and clearly was going to get them all killed by trusting anything this kid said.

                  “He’s not going to say,” Ben cut in. “I can either go through what he knows and then we can decide, or I can go in and take a shuttle.”

                  “You are my _charge_ ,” Poe snapped, outraged. “And I highly doubt you could talk your way past everyone there.”

                  “I can,” Ben said, temper rising. “You don’t know anything about my strength. I’ll signal to you, once the way is clear.”

                  “That’s too dangerous, you can’t fall into their hands—“ Ben bore down on Poe like a rush of water, silencing him, stilling him.

                  “It’s a good idea for me to go,” he said. Then he pulled back, leaving Poe livid, and hopefully convinced. Poe narrowed his eyes, jaw working, and Ben crashed back into the Order kid as he was punched for the second time that day. “Ouch, fuck,” he cried.

                  “Damn it, sorry, Ben,” Poe said almost immediately. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

                  Ben straightened, wiping away some new blood with the back of his hand. Poe looked angry and guilty, now.

                  “I shouldn’t have hit you,” he said. “But don’t ever do that to me again.”

                  “You didn’t hit me that hard,” Ben said, trying to be gracious. It was true, anyway. “That wasn’t hard for me. Luke barely had to hint at it before I could use mind tricks on people.”

                  “Yeah, Luke discourages that, doesn’t he?” Poe asked, sounding sure of himself, judgmental.

                  “This is a situation where enforcing my will on other people will help us,” Ben said.

                  “Oh, hell,” Poe said, running his hand through his hair. Ben was momentarily distracted by the late afternoon light illuminating his face, which was still a little dirty from engine lubricant. “Fine, Ben, but if you get captured I can’t even make a desperate last stand to save your life and hopefully die so that your mother doesn’t kill me.”

                  “I’m part of it all too,” Ben said, which was what Luke told them. They were neither the Republic nor the Resistance, but they had a role in the fate of the galaxy. Luke meant it in an abstract, moral way, but considering he had been a fighter in the Rebel Alliance it didn’t carry much weight with Ben. Stunts like this were his birthright as much as the Force. “Be ready.”

~

                  “Rey,” Ben said, crouching down in front of her. In response, Rey went onto her tiptoes. She liked being taller than Ben. Finn didn’t join in the game. If he stood on her shoulders, probably they could be taller than Ben if he was standing. She didn’t tell him to try, though. He was tired, and afraid. Poe was afraid too. Ben was angry, but that was pretty typical.

                  “Yes,” she replied, because Ben sounded very serious, and he was trying to hold in his anger. He caught her eyes and she felt the connection between them, in the Force, thrum to life.

                  “I’m going to do something to help us all,” he said. “When I’ve done it, you need to lead the others to me. I’m going to make a path. You’ll be able to feel it.”

                  “Hold on, Ben,” Poe interrupted. He put his hand on Ben’s shoulder, making Ben flush and his feelings get very complicated and angry. “You can’t put all that on Rey.”

                  “I can do it!” Rey retorted. Ben’s place in the Force was always easy to find, a writhe of un-concealable energy. Luke was like a deep, slow river, and Ben was a lava flow like they had seen once in D’Qar’s highlands.

                  “Rey is strong in the Force,” Ben said.

                  “Good for her,” Poe said, a tightness in his voice.

                  “This will work. You have to bring them all anyway.” Ben pressed her hands between his and then turned to the red-headed boy who was their prisoner. “All right, give me your clothes.”

                  “What!” the boy yelped, angry. Poe didn’t look very surprised at this twist in Ben’s plans. He told Finn and Rey to give Ben and the boy some privacy, so they shared a food bar from Poe’s bag. It was overly sweet and dry, but Rey was hungry, so she ate it quickly anyway. Then they got to turn around and see Ben.

                  Ben looked so silly in the red-headed boy’s uniform that Rey started giggling. It was too small at the shoulders, even though the two of them were of a height. Ben kept kicking his feet, uncomfortable in the stiff, shiny boots. The boy looked furious to be in Ben’s robes and had refused to put on his boots. They _were_ smelly, but the jungle floor was full of sticks and thorns. Poe was biting his lip.

                  “Tuck your hair under the hat, Ben,” he said eventually. “Our friend’s is short.”

                  “I’m not your _friend_ ,” the boy said. Ben gave him a vicious look. “You’re disrespecting that uniform, you Rebel scum!”

                  “Whoa, haven’t heard that invective in a while,” Poe commented. Rey crossed her legs, getting lost in the older boys’ conversation.

                  “Finn, you can sit next to me and try to feel Ben too,” she said, tucking her feet against her knees so they faced up, and putting her fingers together. She closed her eyes, waiting for Ben to move away.

                  The Force was all around on this island, in a way that felt uncomfortable to Rey. She had pushed it to the back of her awareness, but now, as she felt Ben’s presence move away, she had to let it back in. It felt sticky, hot and fast and excited, and holding Ben in her mind was harder than usual. She sank deeper into herself, trying to be more aware of the Force moving through her, and in Ben. Between them was a line, a line that she thought of as a red and blue light. The Force moved between them, bright and cold.

                  Ben’s focus was divided, split in a way that Luke had not taught Rey how to do yet. His presence was shaking with it, like a cracking crust of dried mud over a bending leg. She pushed hard against him, making the red-blue light flare. She could not hear or see or sense Poe or Finn or the skimmer at all. Ben’s light was twisting uncomfortably, uncontained. He was touching the Force in ways Luke did not, making the hot, sticky feeling surge in her mind’s eye. It was frightening.

                  She moved away from Ben’s presence a little, trying to feel the Force as cool light, not as a motile darkness. She felt Finn’s hand squeeze hers.

                  “Rey, are you okay?” Poe asked. She did not dare open her eyes. She nodded a little.

                  “Yes,” she said. “It’s just scary. Ben is okay too.”

                  Ben’s presence melted more into the disturbing heat of the Force here, his attention splintering further, into agonized points of hot and cold. When he practiced this with Luke (she and some others got to watch the older students) it felt more like a mist or cloud of cool awareness. This felt wrong.

                  Then, finally, Ben was reaching out back towards her, shivering and cracked, but pulling her in. She got to her feet, stepping forward. Poe caught her around the waist.

                  “Rey, you’re going to fall. Can you open your eyes?” His voice was quiet and concerned, and even with all her Force-sensitivity focused on Ben, she could tell he had pulled in his fear tight around him. She shook her head. If she looked at anything besides the red-blue link between them, she would lose it, and she didn’t know if she could get it back. It was like dropping something in the ocean: you might be able to find that shell again, but likely it was gone forever.

                  “Here,” Finn’s hand slipped into hers. “I know how the base is.”

                  They walked for a long time, towards the strength of the unpleasant feeling in the Force. Rey had never felt the Force this way, never felt this close, overwhelming energy that made her heart race. They walked past someone who stood and let them pass, and Rey felt the blunted edges of their mind, ripped to ragged scraps by Ben. She tightened her grip on Finn’s hand, stopped.

                  “Rey?” Poe asked, voice low and tense. She shook her head.

                  “I’m afraid.” She hated to be afraid. She was not afraid of anything anymore, but now the wild energy around her was barely distinct from Ben, and she was afraid, and maybe angry, and she could feel the path Ben had made. There were a few more people in their way, all quiet and overwhelmed, and she didn’t want to go by them.

                  “We’re close to the shuttle bay,” Finn said. “Come on, you can do it.”

                  Rey stood still, trying to clear her mind. It was usually so easy, so natural to do it, on the training ground under the trees. Then she felt another presence, more removed than Ben’s, but larger, come close to her. The fervid, fierce darkness in the Force curled around it, easy and fast. But the darkness of this presence was vast and quieter, punctuated with points like stars. The path to Ben was smoothed over, this person—it was a person, she could tell, a person as wild as Ben but far larger and darker—giving her somewhere easy to step, a safe space where she could feel the line between her and Ben more easily.

                  She stepped forward again, through a different darkness, following the sure steps of this person. Finn, Poe, and the red-headed boy were stepping behind her, scuffing a little.

                  “Rey!” Ben’s voice broke her concentration, and she opened her eyes to see him sitting down in a small shuttle’s open doorway, jaw tight. They were in a shuttle bay. She ran forward, Finn behind her, and crashed into Ben, throwing her arms around him. He felt fragile under her, the Force turbulent in him.

                  “Ben,” she whispered, putting his face between her hands. She felt much better now that they were all together, but Ben still felt too much like the island. “You feel…strange.”

                  “The Dark Side of the Force is strong here,” he said, helping Poe haul the red-headed boy into the shuttle, then collapsing on the co-pilot’s seat. He was whiter than usual, his dark hair soaked with sweat. Rey was tired too, and she sat down on the floor behind Ben’s seat.

                  “What’s going to happen if we take off?” Poe asked Ben. The red-headed boy had a strip of Ben’s tunic tied over his mouth. Rey felt sorry for him. There were small tears shivering in his pale eyes.

                  “Just go,” Ben said. “I can’t touch the Force for much longer here.”

                  There were no seats, just some netting that they could hold onto, and the takeoff was ragged and fast. Finn clung to the netting with one hand and held her with the other. Poe was concerned, sweating, but as soon as they were out of the atmosphere and not jolting around, Rey was asleep.

                  She woke up as the shuttle came out of hyperspace. Ben was awake, but he had been sleeping too. His presence felt better than it had on the planet. Rey turned to her left. Finn was sitting awake, face greyish.

                  “Hey, Finn,” she said. “Do you know any clapping games?”

                  Finn knew a couple, but they were different from the ones she knew.

                  “One, two, three, four, we are knocking at your door. Five, six, seven, eight, only rebels stay out late. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, Alderaan is first that—“

                  “Hey, kids,” Poe cut in. “Finn, choose a different rhyme. Rey, you teach him something.” Ben kicked the viewscreen. The red-headed boy, whose mouth had been untied, laughed in a mean way.

                  “Okay,” Rey said, upset that she couldn’t learn a new game. She walked up to Ben. “Ben, did you feel it?”

                  “Feel what?” he asked.

                  “Someone helped me follow your path,” she said. “It was too scary for me, in all that—that energy felt scary.”

                  “The Dark Side of the Force,” Ben said. “You can ask Luke about it. Was there another presence? I didn’t feel anyone.”

                  “Someone made the darkness quieter for me,” Rey said. It had still been darkness, still blended easily into the wild blood-heat of the Force there, but it had been calm, not frightening. It had been so vast that the shape of the Force there had felt far away.

                  Poe made her sit back down, because they were going to go into orbit soon.

                  “This is Lieutenant Dameron, coming in on a commandeered shuttle.” Poe’s reporting voice was crisp and confident, even though he still felt exhausted to Rey. “All First Order trackers have been disabled.”

                  “Lieutenant, you gave us a hell of a scare. Proceed to land.” That was Colonel Calrissian’s voice, and Rey got on her knees so she could see the planet.

                  “This isn’t Coruscant,” she pointed out. “This is just Yavin IV.” She was disappointed. Ben’s mother, General Organa, was going to meet them on Coruscant. She liked the general a lot.

                  It turned out to be okay, because Luke was waiting for them at the shuttle bay. She could feel him as Poe brought the shuttle down, his calm, strong presence making her feel better. The Force was always cool and bright around Luke.

                  Other soldiers came on board first and helped pull the red-headed boy out, one of them teasing Ben about their changed clothes. Ben had put his own boots back on and taken off the jacket, but the strange wide trousers still looked silly. Finn clung tight to Rey, and Poe took his other hand so he could come off with them.

                  “Luke!” Rey cried. Luke was walking towards them, in a black outfit and a jacket kind of like Poe’s instead of his usual robes. Luke stopped in front of Ben, touching his face while Ben stood still sullenly, looking to the side. His face drew into a frown, and Rey ran up to him, letting go of Finn. “Luke!” she said again, and Luke crouched and picked her up, hugging her.

                  “Rey,” he said, stroking her back. “How are you feeling?”

                  “Tired,” she said, truthfully. “I had to sense Ben in the Force. It was hard.”

                  “Yes, I can see that,” Luke said. He let Rey bury her head in his shoulder, even though she was too old to act like a baby anymore. “After you sleep, we’re going to meditate by the pyramids for a while.”

                  “I’m fine,” Ben said. Luke sighed.

                  “Your strength in the Force is unlike mine. But I can tell this has taken a toll on you. I have readings for you that I found, some old rubbings that were taken from a temple that is destroyed now.” None of that made sense to Rey, so she slithered down from Luke’s arms and went to go get Finn. He was standing next to Poe, sort of holding onto his leg, and staring at Luke.

                  “Finn, come meet Luke,” Rey said, excited. Finn frowned at her.

                  “That’s Luke _Skywalker_!” Finn said, bottom lip pushed out. “He’s scary.”

                  “No he isn’t,” Rey said, and hauled on his arm. He grabbed tighter onto Poe’s leg.

                  “Rey, I need to take Finn to the medic’s now,” Poe said. “You should come with us. He can meet Luke later.”

                  “I’m thirsty,” Rey said. “And we’re fine, we don’t need to go to a medic. I want to see Colonel Calrissian if we’re on Yavin again.” Poe stuck a water bottle into her hands.

                  “Rey, just come with us, okay?” He sounded very tired, and a little irritated, so Rey fell in behind him, sharing the water with Finn. Luke was still talking to Ben, anyway, and she wanted to learn the rest of Finn’s rhyme.

                  “Welcome to Yavin,” she said. “This is the old headquarters of the Rebel Alliance!” Finn looked like he was about to cry. Rey didn’t know what to do about that, so she just took his hand again and they followed Poe to the medical floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about no Finn POV: I just have no idea how to approach an eight year old who's been through that type of trauma. I realize this probably doesn't jive with a lot of the EU material that's been released in the last year, but I started this fic in early 2016, so oh well. 
> 
> You can probably guess who it was guiding Rey through the Dark Side energy. I have many ideas of what the Force could be like, but I think Rey naturally and easily handles the Light Side, whereas Ben who is emotion-driven has some fluency with the Dark Side. I'm a big fan of them Grey Jedi, so hopefully Ben in this verse can learn to use his emotions and his affinity with the Dark in a good way....
> 
> Title from the song "You Were a Kindness" by the National. The full line is "there's a radiant darkness upon us."


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